Wrath Unleashed: Developer Diary, Part 1

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How to make a great strategy game.

By Temara Schulze, Map/Level Designer, The Collective

Wrath Unleashed may not have very much hype behind it, but it should. The easiest comparison to make is that the game is like a 21st century Archon. And that's a good thing considering the lack of strategy games on the market for consoles. Coincidentally, one of the best strategy games currently out for consoles is Gladius, another LucasArts game.

But we digress. Because we're into this game, we think you should know about it. But rather than have us try and give you the skinny on the game, we got the word straight from the source. The following is developer diary by Temara Schulze, Strategy Map/Level Designer for Collective Studios, the developer of the game.

Wrath Unleashed can be described in several ways. The most fun way I heard recently was "...The Bastard Son of Advanced Wars." Throughout the process of designing, it has been compared to anything from chess to Streetfighter, and often to an old classic called Archon - and rightly so, as it takes it's earliest inspiration from the love of that game. Our aim was to bring together vastly different game genres and styles to create something fresh, exciting, and challenging, for both strategy and action fans. Throw in a dash of RPG aesthetics and story, and you have our game.

Designing strategy for Wrath involved close study of games like those mentioned, ongoing analysis, testing, and collaboration. We had to keep in mind the potential for exponential complexity (say that three times, fast!) Playing Wrath involves not only movement on the strategy maps as would be the case in chess, but also monitoring of an array of resources such as health, spells, structures, and others.

We had to balance the game well, while maintaining flexibility. Balance of the strategy portion of the game had to be done in conjunction with balance of the combat arenas. We had to ensure character abilities on the strategy maps were not in conflict with, nor thrown off balance by their powers in the combat arenas. On my end, taking all of the above and more into account, and creating, adding interesting variation, and balancing 30+ strategy maps was both a designer's nightmare and dream! Take it a step further and fit 16 of them to a story, and you've got yourself a behemoth. Kind of like our Cyclops. (Thank heaven for the talented and amazingly hard-working team I worked with!) Enough o' that...Ahem...

Being able to pinpoint things that were not working and describe exactly why was also a challenge. It often came down to seemingly minute details that in reality were greatly affecting game play. Whether or not to allow players to cast spells onto temple hexes is a good example of this. If we allowed players to do this, it meant inevitably that all players would do was focus on temple hexes, casting offensive spells if their opponents held them; and casting healing spells if their own team held them. This actually made the game far too simplistic; we wanted players to spend a bit more time actually formulating strategies!

There were times when one or more of us experienced an epiphany, and would be able to solve a problem that stumped us. We would find key things that needed to be added or changed. If we were too deep into production to implement one solution, we found other, (often even better) solutions. For the temple-spell issue, we realized it was best not to allow spells to be cast, but that other things would need to be done to prevent imbalance. The decision was that standing on a temple hex would heal you slowly over time, letting you feel somewhat safe on a temple but not too safe and preventing you from being totally overwhelmed by offensive spells. Voila.

Oh - I almost forgot something really important -- game pacing! We pulled it off. Our final great challenge in creating the strategy for Wrath was to make sure that the fast paced thrills of the combat arenas worked well with the strategy map play. Imagine playing a long, drawn out game of chess, but in between each move, button mashing, whacking, and downright beating your opponent with a wet noodle...major adrenaline rush!!! And then back to chess, time to think... we solved this by adding in enough options so players can play as they like, including the turn limits and turn timers (which I adore). Options galore.

Well, that about does it for me. We know that creating a great game like Wrath Unleashed can be done, and we're definitely proud of it. Thanks for your interest, and happy gaming!

So there you have it, right from the source. Check back next week for part two of our exclusive Wrath Unleashed developer diaries. And don't forget to check the media page below for some new screens of this addictive title!